Atlanta Legend DJ Jaycee ‘Has Always Been Drawn to the Turntable’ – 95.5 WSB

“I’ve loved records since I was a baby in the cradle,” DJ Jaycee told WSB Radio. “There are pictures of me in my crib, sleeping with records. There are pictures of me in a high chair holding records. I’ve always been fascinated by records and that’s where it all started.

Music is really in his blood, he says.

“My great-grandmother owned a record store in Detroit called C and J Records. I was just fascinated by the records,” he said.

DJ Jaycee used to pay special attention to his mother and fondly remembered the way she would hold a record and place the needle on it.

“As far as composing music goes, my mother used to say, ‘Before I could walk, I was always drawn to the record player. I would watch her put on records. One day she was in the bathroom and she thought someone was breaking into the house,’ and she found out that I was the one playing with the record.”

Whenever there was a party or a barbecue, he would say that his family would put him in charge of the music. His passion and dedication to his craft in the early days would pay off later, as he would save up all his allowance money to buy his first record, a 45 by a soul group called The New Birth. “That’s the Merchant of Dreams.”

He said his family moved to Georgia while he was in college and he would move back and forth for several years until he moved to Georgia permanently in the summer of 1984.

There was an upperclassman in high school who DJed at his junior high dances and he had two turntables and a mixing board. He had a whole crate full of records. All the records that the DJ played that DJ Jaycee liked, he said he wrote them down in his notebook.

“I would go to Record Par, the Northland Mall in Detroit and Professionals Records to locate some of these records,” he said. “I had records, but I didn’t have a mixer. I had a boombox that had a really good pause button.

He learned how to make mixes using the pause button.

“When I moved to Georgia, the first place I lived was in Clarkston, outside of Stone Mountain. Moving here was a culture shock because it didn’t snow here,” he continued.

His parents encouraged him to join the band in elementary school, where he eventually learned song structure.

“Everything goes hand in hand with being a DJ. I learned this in fifth grade, not knowing that everything I was learning would be useful to me in the future,” he said.

He said he worked at an Athlete’s Foot store inside the Rio Mall in Atlanta, where he met a man named Serious.

“He told me about a radio station called Georgia 88.5 Rhythm and Vibes that only played hip-hop,” DJ Jaycee said. “I heard host Randall Moore say they were looking for DJs and they had to send a 15 to 20 minute mix to the station. He liked it. »

Then he started getting more opportunities in his career.

“I worked at four different radio stations: 88.5, 89.3, 90.5 and 91.4,” he said. “I had worked at those stations before I moved to V-103.”

DJ Nabs was So So Deff’s DJ at the time. Whenever he was on tour with Xscape and Da Brat, he would let DJ Jaycee fill in for him.

“That’s how I got my foot in the door.” I filled in sometimes,” DJ Jaycee said.

He once made a tape with a personality named Tasha Love that they submitted to Hot 97.5 (now Hot 107.9). The program director at the time called it “wacky.”

“I used Stephen Atwoods’ rejection of my mix as motivation. I carried it for a long time,” he said.

One day, DJ Jaycee got a call from the music director who said she loved his mixing and wanted to hire him at V-103, but there was a catch. Mixers weren’t paid by radio stations at that time. He gained notoriety by mixing live and spinning live on the radio.

DJ Greg Street took him under his wing at V-103. DJ Jaycee says he has the “utmost respect” for DJ Greg Street for not only helping him in his career, but also paving the way for other generations.

“Greg taught me how to package my music for commercial radio,” he said. “I learned a lot of other lessons.”

He played about four clubs in the Atlanta metro area every week for years until September 2000, when Atlanta rap icon Ludacris brought him to Disturbing Tha Peace Records as an official DJ where they worked together for 11 years.

One day in 1996, Chaka Zulu introduced him to her intern at Hot 97.5 named Chris Bridges.

“Ludacris told me: ‘yo, I hear you on the radio at 88.5 man. And he cited a specific mix that I had made. That let me know that he was really listening to what I was doing on air. This was before he became Chris Luva Luva and he was still learning the ropes. »

Over the next few years, DJ Jaycee frequently saw Bridges at the same clubs he DJed at in Georgia.

“He saw that I could do parties,” DJ Jaycee said. “He was selling his first single “What’s Your Fantasy” independently. He hosted a singles release party for “What’s Your Fantasy” at a Buckhead club called Chili Pepper. While I was rocking his record, he told me he had a few shows coming up and wanted me to come with him.

DJ Jaycee Remembers Ludacris Celebrating His Debut Album “Back for the first time” at an Earwax Records release party in Atlanta in 2000.

“One day he asked me what I thought his second single should be,” DJ Jaycee said. “I said ‘Southern Hospitality.’ The radio version and the album version sounded completely different. When that single came out, that’s when we started playing more shows. We started playing shows down south.”

DJ Jaycee remembers doing a show in Myrtle Beach, Virginia, and Ludacris opened for Ja Rule in November 2000. The set was 15 minutes long at that point.

“That’s when I knew that Luda was going to become a big southern rap star. At one time we opened for OutKast and Ja Rule. The trend started to turn around 2002 when Ja Rule opened for us on tour. We did the Howard University Homecoming, concerts in Philadelphia, Buffalo, Boston, New York, Providence and everywhere. »

Traveling the world and rocking venues with thousands of people has been a “great experience” for DJ Jaycee during his 11 years as Ludacris’ official DJ.

“Just being a music lover helped me,” he said.

He remembers meeting DJ Drama in 1996, while he was still a student at Clark-Atlanta. Years later, DJ Drama invited him to join the Aphilliates, a group that included Don Cannon and DJ Sense.

“My very first mixtape as Aphilliate was in 2005. They had the most popular mixtapes on the streets,” DJ Jaycee said. “I wanted to make mixtapes that really reflected my personality.”

DJ Jaycee stays busy on radio station 102.9 on Saturday nights and does a mix on Georgia Radio Hall of Famer Ryan Cameron’s Show.

“It’s an honor and a privilege to do this. I did different events. I’m doing a cruise in September and I’ll be doing more this year,” he said.

He is grateful to all the people who have helped him on his journey and those who continue to support him.

“For a while I was lost,” he said. “Today I am thinking the clearest I have ever thought in my entire life. I’m surrounded by people who want me to be what I’m truly capable of. I made my living playing records. I played them every day for free. They say that when you love your work, you don’t feel like it’s work. »